Dribblings and ramblings of a semi-professional railway worker and gunzel type.

WANDERINGS OF A GUNZEL......AIYAHHHHHHHHHH

Yes, the odd rambling from a semi-dysfunctional railway type, both as a professionial-at times debatable...and as a hobby..No perversions mind, only good honest blokey hornbags allowed! After years of travelling in many parts of Asia, any sensible fellow knows, and understands, that they are world's best women! And not to mention some trains of course! These articles come about in a highly sporadic fashion, due to some unpleasent aspersions being cast between the railway hobby, and offences against the underaged.Not to mention a scent of doom laden prophecy, that the world as we know it shall shortly endure! Surely mankind can no longer be allowed to continue it's excesses of greed and consumption on the face of the planet, and nature shall judge us by our actions. The law of cause and effect is being sown with devestating consequences!Ha!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Sea levels will rise by one metre this century, according to German scientists who warn that global warming is happening faster than previously predicted.

Citing UN date on climate change, two senior German scientists say that previous predictions were far too cautious and optimistic.

Earlier estimates predicted a rise of 18cm to 59cm in sea levels this century.

That estimate is woefully understated, according to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who heads the Potsdam Institute for Research on Global Warming Effects, and Jochem Marotzke, a leading meteorologist.

"We now have to expect that the sea level will rise by a metre this century," said Schellnhuber in Berlin.

He said it is "just barely possible" that world governments will be able to limit the rise in average global temperatures to just two degrees Celsius by the end of the century, if they all strictly adhered to severe limits in carbon dioxide emissions.

Those restrictions call for halving greenhouse emissions by 2050 and eliminating CO2 emissions entirely by the end of the century.

But the German researchers said the resulting limited increase in temperature is predicated on strict adherence to those restrictions without exception, and even then there are many variables which could thwart the goals.

Schellnhuber, who is official adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on climate-change issues, said the new findings employed data unavailable to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for its most recent global warming report.

The two experts said the IPCC report had been based on data up to 2005 only but since then ice loss in the Arctic had doubled or tripled.

Schellnhuber charged that 20 per cent of the loss of the ice sheet on Greenland could be directly linked to the added carbon dioxide emissions from new Chinese coal-fired power stations.

The new sea level predictions, according to Schellnhuber, are based on studies of melting Himalaya glaciers and the shrinking Greenland ice cap.

He blamed the rapidly diminishing size of the Greenland ice cap on soot particles from Chinese coal-fired power plants.

"That is truly a global effect," he said.

Soot settles on the ice, preventing the ice from reflecting as much sunlight back into space.

The result is that the ice absorbs sunlight rays, raising the temperature of the ice and causing it to melt.

"Air pollution plays a massive role in the accelerating pace of climate change, he said.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Scientists are concerned that the will to tackle climate change has waned in the midst of the financial crisis, with the latest data showing climate change is moving more rapidly than they ever expected.

TranscriptTONY JONES, PRESENTER: Well as governments remain transfixed by the financial crisis, some of Australia's top scientists are concerned that the will to tackle the potentially more dramatic global nightmare of climate change may be waning.

Well tonight they tell Lateline how the latest data shows climate change is moving more rapidly than even their worst expectations.

In a moment we'll be joined Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the world's preeminent scientific body on climate change.

But first Margot O'Neill reports on the rapidly rising levels of anxiety among some of Dr Pahcauri's colleagues in Australia.

MARGOT O'NEILL, REPORTER: Meet three of Australia's, and the world's, top climate change scientists. Each of them shared in last year's Nobel Prize for their work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And each is usually most comfortable with cautious, measured public discussion. Well, not any more.

PROF. ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS, MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY: A lot of people like myself, and I believe many, many scientists now, who are frantically, hysterically worried.

PROF, DAVE GRIGGS, MONASH UNIVERSITY: Another one of these facts comes in that catches even you unawares and you think, "Oh shit! Not another one! I wasn't expecting that."

PROF. DAVID KAROLY, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: The only way that I could see the climate system in 50 years time or 100 years time being cooler than at present is if the earth got hit by an asteroid and basically human civilisation was destroyed.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Australia's climate change scientists are stirring, goaded by inaction in the face of a potential cataclysm, they're picking up megaphones because they need everyone to know it's speeding up.

From the loss of Arctic sea ice to early signs of melting permafrost, to sea level rises, to carbon dioxide emissions. Many of the projections contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just a year ago are being overtaken.

DAVE GRIGGS: When we made predictions a couple of years ago that the Arctic sea ice might disappear by the end of the century people were sceptical. Now people think, "Well, it actually might be gone by mid-century."

And if you talk to the scientific community people are just, "Oh, yeah, yeah, we know that now. That's gone." And only a few years ago that was a really dramatic and controversial finding because it was something that was so far beyond our concept.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Dave Griggs now leads Monash University's new Sustainability Institute after heading up the British Government's Hadley Institute and the IPCC's Science Working Group.

What most of us don't understand, he says, is that no matter what we do, the planet is now locked into dramatic temperature and sea level rises by 2050 because of the greenhouse gasses already trapped in the atmosphere. A two-degree temperature rise was once projected towards the end of the century and regarded as a tipping point for dangerous climate change. It's now likely to occur in our lifetime.

DAVE GRIGGS: Maybe two, two to three degrees by mid-century.

MARGOT O'NEILL: I mean, that almost is the end for the Great Barrier Reef.

DAVE GRIGGS: Inherently scientists are very conservative, and they won't come out and make a statement in public unless they are very confident about it. But the kind of sort of thing that are going around in private, you know, oh, the Barrier Reef's gone, the Murray Darling's gone.

ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS: We should be exercising triage. We should be looking at the parts of the world that are already dead, they're just still walking around. And we just need to leave them alone, and maybe the Murray Darling Basin is one of those.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Ann Henderson-Sellers returned to Australia last year after heading the UN's World Climate Research Program in Geneva. She believes it's time for climate scientists to break ranks with the consensus science of the IPCC.

ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS: It is not true that all scientists agree with everything that is in the IPCC fourth assessment report. Some of us, including me, think that it is worse, it is more frightening, more dangerous, happening faster. And I now think that we perhaps have not done the right thing in seeming as if we're of a single mind, a single view. We did it for all the right reasons, for wanting not to open up a "Well, this scientist says one thing and this scientist says something different." But now I don't think that that's right any longer.

MARGOT O'NEILL: She also wonders how the next IPCC report can be any more persuasive.

ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS: We've now said for four reports the world is getting warmer, this is a serious concern. The world really is getting warmer. This is a quite serious concern, and the time for action has already passed. What will we say in the fifth IPCC report? I simply don't know, I have no idea how we can couch the terms anymore. What degree of anxiousness can you add to that?

DAVID KAROLY: We can't say whether this is due to climate change but it is exactly what you'd expect for some of the moral predictions for like 50 or 100 years time, but we're seeing it now.

DAVID KAROLY: David Karoly returned to Australia last year from the University of Oklahoma after working as a lead author on the 2007 IPCC Report. He says it can be difficult and exhausting continually battling governments, big business and climate sceptics, but his lowest point came during negotiations in 2007 when news reports revealed that China, Russia and Saudi Arabia tried to derail even the conservative scientific consensus of the IPCC. David Karoly says he almost walked out.

DAVID KAROLY: There were clear, vested interests from some countries that were lying, raising scientific misinformation. And I was prepared, as were a lot of other scientists at that meeting, prepared to give up. The system was so close to being broken. The system fortunately didn't break.

MARGOT O'NEILL: The current financial turmoil has proven the world can act quickly when faced with a crisis, the scientists say. The same drastic intervention is the only solution for global warming.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Oh dear, start packing those floaties, soon every house will have a water view!

October 17, 2008 - 11:10AM

Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers have claimed."Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter [to the rest of the world]," Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card.The report, compiled by 46 scientists from 10 countries, looks at a variety of conditions in the Arctic.The region has long been expected to be among the first areas to show impacts from global warming, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is largely a result of human activities adding carbon dioxide and other gases to the atmosphere."Changes in the Arctic show a domino effect from multiple causes more clearly than in other regions," said James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington."It's a sensitive system and often reflects changes in relatively fast and dramatic ways."For example, autumn air temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 5 degrees Celsius above normal.The report noted that last year was the warmest year on record in the Arctic, leading to a record loss of sea ice. This year's sea ice melt was second only to that of last year.Rising temperatures help melt the ice, which in turn allows more solar heating of the ocean.That warming of the air and ocean affects land and marine life and reduces the amount of winter sea ice that lasts into the following summer.The study also noted a warming trend on Arctic land and an increase in greenness as shrubs move north into areas that were formerly permafrost.While the warming continues, the rate in this century is less than in the 1990s due to natural variability, the researchers said.In addition to global warming, natural cycles of warming and cooling occur, and a warm cycle in the 1990s added to the temperature rise.Now with a cooler cycle in some areas the rise in temperatures has slowed, but Overland said he expects that it will speed up again when the next natural warming cycle comes around.Asked if an increase in radiation from the sun was having an effect on the Earth's climate, Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Centre in Columbus, Ohio, said that, while it was important, increased solar output accounts only for about 10 per cent of global warming."You can't use solar to say that greenhouse gases are not a major factor," Overland added.Other findings from the report include:- The Arctic Ocean continued to warm and freshen due to ice melt. This was accompanied by an "unprecedented" rate of sea level rise of nearly 0.25 centimetres a year.- Warming continued around Greenland last year resulting in a record amount of ice melt. The Greenland ice sheet lost 101 cubic kilometres of ice, making it the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.- Reindeer herds that had been increasing since the 1970s are now showing signs of levelling off or beginning to decline.- Goose populations are increasing as they expand their range within the Arctic.- Data on marine mammals is limited, but they seem to have mixed trends. They are adapted to life in a region that is at least seasonally covered in ice. There is concern about the small numbers of polar bears in some regions. The status of many walrus groups is unknown. Some whales are increasing, others declining."This is a very complicated system and we are still working diligently to sort out its mysteries," Richter-Menge said.In addition to Richter-Menge, Overland and Box, lead authors of the report included Michael Simpkin of NOAA and Vladimir Romanovsky of the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, Alaska.